Shard/Crystal Ceiling Price

[HakuroDK]

Far from it. shards already aren't a good enough money maker as it is, even on Jenova, where shards are 150 gil per. it gets better with crystals and clusters, but shards themselves need a higher price floor, not a price ceiling.

100% against this.

100% against a price floor. Do you know how many shards it takes for Armorer to craft anything sellable? At least four at the lowest possible level, and closer to 40-50 at the highest sub-50. At your server's rates, that's charging a 600 gil fee to craft something that'll likely only sell for half that (without price of other materials taken into consideration), and a 7500 gil fee to craft something that may only sell for less than a quarter of that (without price of other materials taken into consideration.) If materials are taken into consideration, the percentages are significantly worse.

I'm lucky that I'm on Balmung where shards usually sell for 45-ish gil, but still. 150 per shard is unreasonable when it's a mandatory catalyst for every crafter. Why can't gatherers gather up metals or logs? AFAIK, as far as mining goes, only Copper, Tin, and Zinc Ore sell from NPC vendors. Every other ore is purely controlled by the market board, with a soft ceiling as far up as mythril due to ingots being sold from Amal'jaa, with cobalt and electrum having free reign over the markets. Hell, as someone who has CUL as one of their three major crafting classes, I prefer to buy ingredients over the market boards rather than gather them up myself because there are so many different ingredients needed and in such high quantities, that I need to keep a stockpile of every ingredient I can find, preferably in HQ.

There's also stuff like Darksteel and Spruce which is always in demand for endgame crafters. Don't talk like shards and crystals are the only feasible means of revenue for a gatherer, because that's complete and utter falsehood and, in fact, those are some of the worst means of revenue compared to many other options out there.